Cellular content such as the mitochondrial network need to be correctly proportioned between mother and daughter cells during cell division.

Now Center investigators Susanne Rafelski, Hao Li, Wallace Marshall and colleagues examine this process in budding yeast, which divides asymmetrically. Their results indicate that while the mitochondrial network size increases with increasing cell size in the bud, the mitochondria-to-cell size ratio continually decreases in aging mothers over successive generations. You can read the UCSF news article and check out the paper published recently in Science to learn more.